The Informant!

The newest work under the director of Steven Soderbergh (Ocean's Trilogy) is The Informant!, a quirky dark comedy based on Kurt Eichenwald's 2000 book, the true tale about the highest-ranked whistle-blower in the history of white collar crime, Mark Whitacre (played by Matt Damon). Whitacre is a Cornell Ph. D. and is a rising star at Archer Daniels Midland, an agribusiness powerhouse involved in the high-fructose corn syrup found in about 90% of our grocery products. ADM was a powerful Fortune 500 company and was earning millions by price fixing with its competitors. Whitacre saw himself as an honest man and could not stand seeing himself letting illegal operations slide by under his watch. He was a tattle-tale who just wanted to do the right thing.

Through 5 years of serving the FBI as an informant, Whitacre provides hundreds of secretly recorded tapes from business meetings and other discussions. Unfortunately, he suffers from a bipolar disorder making it difficult for him to tell the truth. The FBI becomes frustrated as he slowly becomes another boy-who-cried-wolf. The dam bursts for Whitacre after he reveals that he siphoned off millions of dollars for himself, defending himself with the claims that "everyone was doing it." Whitacre brough ADM down, himself included.

The Informant! is an amusing film, there is a lot of subtle humor and a lot of quirky laughs. The script is filled with quotes of Whitacres thoughts, one of my favorites: "Polar bears cover their noses before they pounce on a seal. How do polar bears know their noses are black? Did they look in the water one day, see their reflection and say, 'Man, I'd be invisible if it wasn't for that thing.'" The score is equally erractic (perhaps mirroring the nature of Whitacre's bipolar imagination), it ranges from jazzy, to whimsical, to nearly Revolutionary War patriotic. There are a lot of familiar faces in supporting cast, including Joel McHale from E! Network and NBC's new comedy Community. George Clooney also makes the credits as an executive producer. This was a fun movie to sit though and I found plenty of laughs to be amused by. Damon totally nails his role, and is obviously one of the most versatile actors in the game. You can wait til it hits DVD but this sly comedy is a film worth seeing though the last 20 minutes seems at times rushed and at times drawn out too far. Hey, maybe your business law professor will assign it. We can dream right?

Rating: 2.5/4

Rated R for language.


The Informant! Trailer